


Whatever You Want [Fourteen Years and Counting]

by the_afterlight



Category: Shelter (2007)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-21
Updated: 2010-05-21
Packaged: 2017-10-09 15:35:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/88934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_afterlight/pseuds/the_afterlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts when Zach is eight, and Gabe brings him home from school -- snapshot memories of fourteen years (and counting).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whatever You Want [Fourteen Years and Counting]

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mjules](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjules/gifts).



> This isn't _quite_ the fic I intended to write when I first set out, and it's been wallowing in my gDocs for a few months while I tried to figure out what to do with it.
> 
> Title from the Vienna Teng song Whatever You Want, with one year added for accuracy.

It starts when Zach is eight.

Shaun's fourteen -- just turned fourteen the week before, in fact -- when Gabe brings his new friend home from school. "He's on a _scholarship_," Gabe pronounces carefully, as if the word's still unfamiliar. It probably is, Shaun realises, as he sees Gabe shocked that Zach's never played on a Super Nintendo before. Zach stays over that weekend, and when Gabe offers to let him try out his surfboard, Shaun offers to give him a couple of pointers.

A couple of weekends later, when Zach stays over again, there's a board waiting for Zach. Zach, at first, assumes that Gabe got it for him, but Gabe just shrugs and waves at Shaun. "Everyone should have their own board," Shaun says when asked. "And anyway, this way I can take you and Gabe out at the same time."

Shaun is fourteen, and he dreams that night about his usual fantasy, the poolboy. It's not until the next day that he realises that, in this dream, Criss had Zach's eyes.

* * *

It gets a little weirder when Zach is twelve.

It's the end of the summer, three days before Shaun's eighteenth birthday. He's packing the last of this things before he heads off to university, and just happens to be stepping out of his room when Gabe runs by, holding an odd-shaped bundle that looks like it might be clothes. Gabe is followed, a few moments later, by a _stark naked Zach_, and Shaun, who has spent the last two years (since, a small voice in the back of Shaun's head reminds him, Zach hit puberty) keeping a _very firm hold_ on himself -- and not in any dirty sense, because that, after all, _wouldn't be helping_ \-- has to turn around, close the door, and take a very firm hold on himself.

In a very, very dirty sense.

When he finishes, after cleaning himself up with a spare rag that he tosses into the trash, he emerges again. Making his way downstairs this time sans incident, he's relieved to find Zach once again fully-clothed. "When do you leave?" Zach asks, pouting a little bit. "I want to go surfing again before you go."

"You and Gabe can go," Shaun insists. He's unable, now, to get the image of Zach in a wetsuit, the top stripped down to his waist, out of his head. "And anyway, I'll be back for Thanksgiving."

"But it won't be the same!" Zach surprises Shaun by launching himself at the older boy, catching him around the waist. Shaun has to think of the time he walked in on his Great-Aunt Agatha when she'd just gotten out of the shower. It's the only thing he's found that will keep him from getting hard when he doesn't want to. This time, it almost doesn't work. "I'll miss you," Zach adds.

Shaun has to smile. "I'll miss you, too, Shrimp," he admits. "And anyway, I'm only going to LA. Maybe I'll make it home for a weekend soon."

It's still September when Shaun makes it home for the first time. He claims it's just for laundry, but he's already up and waiting for Zach and Gabe when they roll out of bed at 6:30 to go surfing.

* * *

It's a little bit easier when Zach is fifteen. And drunk.

A month and a half after Shaun's twenty-first birthday, he's home from LA for about a week or so. There's a party, Gabe tells him, and then nods significantly. Shaun waits patiently for the rest of whatever it is that Gabe's leading up to when it hits him.

"Oh, okay," he says. "A couple of kegs and some wine coolers?"

It's as simple as that, and Shaun -- who has looked older than he is for the past three years, and was the go-to guy for beer in his dorm during his second year of university -- has no issues using his still-shiny, month-and-a-half-old ID to purchase a bunch of alcohol for his brother's high school booze-up. He hangs out upstairs for most of it, not really wanting to get involved with a bunch of high schoolers, and anyway he wants to get through the third chapter by the end of the week, even though it's fighting him every step of the way. Eventually, though, most of the kids have gone home, and when Shaun looks out his window, it's just Gabe and Zach on the porch, with some girl puking over the edge. He ends up going down and meeting Tori, and he doesn't really mind, even when Zach introduces her as his girlfriend, because she makes him happy, and also she seems kinda cool when she's not throwing up.

Shaun's drinking a beer of his own and talking with Zach when he realises that Gabe and Tori have both passed out on the futon. He's sitting in a camp chair, and Zach's leaning against the railing of the porch, and the sky's already starting to get a little light in the east even though true dawn is still a ways away. "So you and Tori," Shaun asks, and he totally wouldn't except this totally wasn't his first beer of the night. Morning. Whatever. "You and Tori, are you two... y'know."

"What?" Zach asks, and then laughs, his eyes a bit fuzzy through his own haze of alcohol. He hasn't thrown up, though, Shaun realises, and that seems kinda cool somehow. "What? No. Not yet. Maybe soon, though?

"What's it like?"

It takes a moment for Shaun to respond. After all, his own experience is limited to some fumbling handjobs, a couple of blowjobs in the bathroom of a bar, and that one time he and his roommate third year got really drunk and his roommate decided it would be awesome to experiment with being gay and convinced Shaun to let him fuck him. And several hundred sex dreams about Zach. "I dunno," Shaun says, finally. "Like... when you jack off. Only better."

It's about as well as he can do, and Shaun, later, is kicking himself, since if he can't describe what sex feels like, how's he going to write it into his novel? And there's already a bunch of sex scenes planned, and he knows he won't make word-count without them.

"Oh," Zach replies. "I guess I figured it would be... I dunno. Different."

"Maybe it will be, with the right person." Shaun wishes that right person could be him, but he's not holding out hope. After all, how sad is it to be out of university, and still crushing on his little brother's best friend?

His little brother's best friend, who is passed out on his shoulder, and drooling enough to wet Shaun's shirt through. Somehow, Shaun still finds it really cute.

* * *

Gabe is seventeen when he asks Shaun, "Why don't you come home anymore? We haven't seen you in, what, a year, almost? Dude, do you hate us or something?"

He's mostly joking, but Shaun cringes anyway, thankful that Gabe can't see it through the phone. "Sorry, man," he says, in reply, trying to come up with some way to... prevaricate. Which is a nice writer-ly word for 'lie', he's reminded by the voice in the back of his mind. "I've been really busy with... the novel. Y'know, trying to finish it up."

"Yeah? You ever going to get that out?" Gabe asks. "Or is this one going to fail like the last two?"

Shaun doesn't finish that novel, not right away. It takes a couple of months, first, for him to find his inspiration again. Of course, that inspiration comes when he visits home for a weekend. Zach's not around, he's busy with school-work, and Shaun is thankful that he doesn't have to face _that_ discussion when he tells his parents that he's seeing someone. Named Michael.

Michael's a surfer, too, and he's a couple of years younger than Shaun. He draws, but doesn't paint. He's a little short, has dark hair.

Shaun ignores those parts.

His parents react predictably. Gabe does, too, when he finds out later that day. He comes home to find Shaun packing up the last of his things from the house. "They'll come around," he tells his big brother. "Don't be a stranger, yeah, bro?"

Shaun doesn't see Zach before he leaves, doesn't see the man he's growing up to be. Shaun is pretty sure that it's better that way.

* * *

The next time Shaun sees Zach, he's twenty-eight, and Zach is twenty-two, and there's a lifetime between them. But Shaun's heart still quickens as it always has, and he thinks, when he catches Zach looking at him out of the corner of his eye, that maybe there's a chance after all.

Maybe when Zach's twenty-two, Shaun thinks, maybe that's when it _really_ starts.


End file.
